Project to Code Cancer Genomes

Barely two years after the completion of the Human Genome Project, a 13-year massive effort by worldwide scientists to map the human genome, U.S. researchers are now planning to collaborate in a national effort towards an even larger endeavor—sequencing the genomes of all human cancers.

The Harvard-MIT Broad Institute—along with the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), a major teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School (HMS)—will be a part of the effort.

The institutions have been working collaboratively since the Broad Institute’s establishment in 2003.

Currently called the Human Cancer Genome Project (HCGP), the initiative is estimated to last nine years and cost approximately $1.35 billion if implemented. After a three-year trial period, the HCGP would be fully underway by 2008 and slated to finish by 2014.

“The hope is for one nationally coordinated effort. [The HCGP] would bring it all under one roof,” said Dorie Hightower, public affairs specialist at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

According to Hightower, big proponents of this national effort to map human cancer genomes include Eric S. Lander, director of the Broad Institute and Leland H. Hartwell, president of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

According to Matthew L. Meyerson ’85, assistant professor of pathology at DFCI and HMS, the initiative will revolutionize cancer patient treatment.

“One day every person will get their genome sequenced. This might eventually be a routine part of cancer care,” said Meyerson, a leader of cancer genome research at DFCI and a former Crimson editor. “You can target the events which cause cancer. I actually think this will lead to much more effective cancer treatments.”

The completion of the HCGP would allow doctors to quickly and accurately diagnose the specific subtype of cancer in a patient, enabling the most efficient and efficacious patient therapy.

Currently, cancer treatment is challenging in part because of its heterogeneity—many different mutations in cells can result in the same cancer. But scientists now realize that certain drugs treat only a specific mutation in a particular cancer effectively.

For example, the anti-cancer drug Iressa effectively treats lung adenocarcinoma only in patients harboring specific mutations in one specific receptor.

Beginning examples of such genome-oriented cancer treatments such as Iressa have met with overwhelming success, according to Larry J. Thompson, communications director for the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)—one of the 27 institutes of the NIH.

“The idea of a magic bullet is now no longer a pie in the sky,” said Thompson, explaining that the dream of an infallible treatment for cancer is now a real possibility.

While the plan for centers nationwide to collaborate is recent, researchers at DFCI have been working on sequencing cancer genomes since 2001.

In February, a working group for biomedical technology convened at the NCI and recommended in a report that the HCGP begin as a three-year trial run period.

Although currently the NCI and the NHGRI will provide all of the funding for the trial project in the next three years—approximately $169 million, according to the report—researchers hope that private and other public funds will be donated to support the project.

“The NCI and NHGRI will co-fund the project now, but we are hoping that this will then turn into a public and private funded endeavor,” said Hightower.

—Staff writer Risheng Xu can be reached at xu4@fas.harvard.edu.